Design for Reliability

The ITRS lists several areas where reliability technology needs development. This includes test methods for new materials and processes. However, perhaps the greatest change in reliability assurance is the requirement to place more of the responsibility for reliability assurance into the hands of circuit designers. This stems from the general compromising of reliability to obtain higher performance. Semiconductor processes can no longer be though of as reliable for all designs that pass a few simple design rules. Reliable designs can now only be produced with a significant investment in reliability simulations, cell library testing and advanced test structure development. Designers must look at effects due to parametric distributions, thermal limits, stresses introduced by packages and neutron and alpha particle radiation. The shift of this responsibility to circuit designers will change the traditional foundry/fabless relationship and will likely increase the demands for detailed failure analysis in the future